Thanks so much for playing the Steel Century Groove Demo and leaving your comments, feedback, and reviews! It's all been incredibly helpful and continues to make the game better.
Starting October 13th, Steel Century Groove will be participating in Steam Next Fest! This update is releasing now to make sure everything is stable and bug-free, but please do come back and play during the festival. It makes a huge difference for indie developers to have more people playing the demo while it's ongoing.
And there will be plenty to do! This update allows you to load your previously completed demo saves, adds a new Freeplay Mode, and introduces a preview of the endgame challenge Endless Mode! To play these new modes, load up your save and follow the in-game instructions to speak to the Goggle Guys at their pop-up on the outskirts of Nor Sentryville.
There's also a short new quest featuring some familiar faces from Steel Century Groove: Midnight! The quest starts in the bottom-left corner of the Nor Sentryville park, and will continue in the full game.
Last but not least, to celebrate the start of Next Fest, the first single from the game, Pain by Weet., will be dropping on all streaming platforms on October 13th!
Patch Notes
Gameplay
The Goggle Guys from Steel Century Groove: Midnight have opened a new pop-up on the outskirts of Nor Sentryville. Speak to them to experience Freeplay and Endless Mode.
Added a new side quest, starting from the corner of the park in Nor Sentryville, featuring some familiar faces from Steel Century Groove: Midnight.
You can now press B on the gamepad or Left Shift on the keyboard to sprint!
Replica Tenzerks can now gain XP and level up, unlocking new passives.
Tenzerk level is now capped at 5 for the demo
Added a Win Condition option to Freeplay Mode that allows you to continue battling until the music is over.
Adjusted the intensity of force feedback effects throughout the game and added a new option in the options menu to control them. These effects can feel very different depending on your gamepad, so you may want to raise or lower their intensity.
Adjusted the scalings on the Fuel Injector and Inverse Ignition Coil mods for the Voltace.
The Single Use Ignition mod for the Aedonix now applies a buff, rather than increasing Acclaim gained from a single use of Impact.
Fixed an issue where the Sentilon would not gain XP for combining AI with Genetic Algorithm.
Slightly reduced the Aedonix's XP gain.
The Aedonix's Meltdown counterplay is now based on ! Important moves, rather than Buffs or Debuffs.
Slightly increased the length of non-boss battles.
Small improvements to the underlying accuracy of note hit judgements (the difference is one or two frames at most).
Added a tutorial for how to move your character after character creation. Increased visibility of the front door exit from your house and added an extra line to the player's Mom to help clarify where you need to go.
Music
Added a new song: Jump Everybody by DRIFALL, which is now used for the intro performance by Wreckless in Story Mode. This song will be unlocked for all players, even if you've already played the intro previously.
Tracks from the built-in soundtrack can now be unlocked even while using custom music.
Updated the Custom Music help screen to indicate that you can use songs in WAV, MP3, or OGG.
Very minor improvements to beat alignment across all built-in songs.
UI
Improved the automatic latency calibration process and added it to its own options tab.
Tips now appear when loading into battle or when defeated. These can be turned off in the options menu.
The victory screen now shows how long the battle took and your overall accuracy.
Added a new UI that appears when you receive a new replica Tenzerk explaining their special move and level up bonuses.
Replica Tenzerk moves now use an octagon shape to more easily differentiate them from your lead Tenzerk's moves.
Increased gamepad navigation speed throughout all menus.
Fixed issues with HUD displays getting rotated excessively or cut off on ultrawide monitors.
Fixed various bugs that allowed you to use a gamepad to open the pause menu while other UI modals were already open.
Art/Visuals
Opponents now have more visual variety in their replica Tenzerks.
Reduced the size of all note hit VFX.
Visual improvements to note hit VFX and the gameplay line.
Added a few new player hair options.
Straightened out the railings in the Marion Town Recycling Plant
Updated some of the faces and customization options for early-game pilots
Audio
Improved audio scheduling for Tenzerk footstep sounds to make sure they align with the beat.
Improved audio playback of hit sounds to help them align better with the music. By default, they are now scheduled/delayed to play at the correct time when you hit a note early. You can change this setting in the Options menu.
Added UI sound effects to various places throughout the game where they were missing.
Fixed an issue where the counterplay sound effect would not play when getting a burst of attention from the Aedonix's Meltdown move.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue where the Dualdrive Fabricate toast popup could sometimes be hidden incorrectly when the cursor passed by.
Fixed a bug where the game could get stuck following a winning Acclaim trail to the top bar at the end of a battle.
Fixed a bug where the chromatic aberration effect could get stuck on screen if the battle ended while it was active.
Fixed a variety of issues where the player could get stuck against objects in the environment. Reduced jitter when running into obstacles.
Fixed a bug where extra, incorrect mods could appear at the end of the mods list in some circumstances.
Thanks for playing! If you run into any problems with this update or have more feedback, please send over a report via the in-game UI, comment on this update, or post it on the Steam discussion boards. I read everything!